Europe and Latin America join forces to strengthen the fight against organized crime

The main regional justice institutions of Latin America (AIAMP, COMJIB and the Ibero-American Judicial Summit) signed yesterday in Brussels the declaration that initiates a new stage of collaboration with the European Union with the aim of defining common strategies in the field of criminal justice.

This declaration will allow the design of measures based on common standards that promote the effectiveness of the investigation and prosecution of the main forms of organized crime, which are part of a new political cycle of justice shared between Latin America and the European Union. The director of the justice and rule of law area of the FIIAPP, Mariano Guillén, explains from Brussels that “it is a matter of analyzing the shared challenges with a single vision, working towards homologous regional structures that facilitate trans-regional work”.

The European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, stated that “taking our cooperation to the next level requires strong protection of fundamental rights. This is why we want to intensify our exchanges with national authorities and judicial cooperation networks in Ibero-America”. For her part, Jolita Butkeviciene, Director of International Partnerships for Latin America and the Caribbean at the European Commission, stressed the need for judicial cooperation between the EU and Latin America based on trust and a more strategic dialogue to tackle organized crime.

Latin American partners have also highly valued regional cooperation between Latin America and the European Union. For Jorge Abbot, President of AIAMP, there are common spaces to develop a real common justice agenda between the EU and Latin America. The Secretary General of COMJIB, Enrique Gil Botero, urged to address the interdependence of globalization and the new reality that threaten to paralyze, “even regress”, the common agendas.

On the other hand, Elena Martínez Rosso, representing the Ibero-American Judicial Summit, reaffirmed the CJI’s commitment to integrate the fight against transnational organized crime as a thematic axis of the Summit. “Without judicial cooperation, the fight against organized crime is not possible,” he added.  José de la Mata, Spain’s national member of Eurojust, and Michael Carlin of the Council of the European Union also took part in the opening ceremony.

In addition to the regional justice organizations, the meeting in Brussels was attended by high-level representatives from several Latin American countries (Ministers, Attorneys General and Supreme Court Justices). From the European Union, two Member States (Spain and Portugal) were present. The judicial authorities have held dialogues with the main EU justice institutions (DG JUST and EUROJUST) and with members of the Parliament or the Council of the European Union.

Towards a shared, digitized and digitized justice with a focus on environmental crime and gender
The objectives of the justice policy cycle will be renewed every two years and a monitoring committee will be in charge of defining priorities and assessing progress with the presence of European Union institutions.

The coordinator of the justice area of PAcCTO, Antonio Roma, underlines the importance of this new mechanism “which represents an important step forward in the fight against organized crime and the definition of public justice policies for the future”.

Some of the objectives that have been defined for this first cycle are:

The promotion of rapid, effective and respectful of fundamental rights international legal cooperation, with special attention to the creation and electronic transmission of requests for legal cooperation, the use of joint investigation teams and data protection.
The generalization of the use of electronic means of evidence in criminal proceedings.
Protection of the environment through appropriate criminalization and improvement of specialized research in this area.
Strengthening of national regulations and institutional collaboration for the deprivation of profits from organized crime.
The incorporation of the gender perspective as an element of analysis and design of justice policies.
The promotion of public security through the fight against impunity, with the collaboration of CLASI.